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Supreme Court Rewrites the Rules of Jurisdiction

InsideCounsel

In this article, Brian Hill and Dawn Murphy-Johnson discuss the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman, which established that a U.S. district court may assert general or "all purpose" personal jurisdiction over a corporate defendant only if the forum is one where the entity is "fairly regarded as at home," which is usually the defendant's place of incorporation or principle place of operation. "Although the lower courts have been left to grapple with Daimler's implications, the decision should provide some relief to foreign nonparties served with Rule 45 requests," the authors said. "Daimler has made it much more difficult for courts to exercise general personal jurisdiction over foreign entities, meaning it is unlikely a court can compel a foreign nonparty to produce information unless the court can properly exercise specific jurisdiction over it."